How the FT is building brand loyalty with young readers

Jessica Davies of Digiday writes about how the Financial Times lifted its paywall for schools around the world to get younger consumers to read its content.

Davies writes, “‘Historically, the FT has been perceived as [having] an older audience already in working life or advanced education,’ said Jack. ‘But this is important in terms of thinking about our future readers, and with the wider debate around fake news and poor quality information so readily available, we feel providing high-quality information to that next generation is very important.’

“The program, which began in the U.K. in 2017, has rolled out to 2,300 schools globally. While around 75 percent of those schools are in the U.K., there are around 100 involved in the U.S. and other schools are participating in countries where English is a second language, like China. This is where the FT’s development of audio text articles has come in handy because students learning English can hear how the article sounds, added Jack.

“More than a million FT pages have been accessed by students and teachers in the program over the last year and 34,000 individual accounts created, according to the publisher.”

Read more here.